Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard

Somehow I managed to miss this book when it was first released around 2006. Strange really given in 2006 I was 15 years old and really in the target age group for this book. But it passed me by and it's only now aged 20 that I've stumbled across it. That's probably in part down to the television show of the same name – although I haven't actually watched it yet. I wanted to read the books first.

So the first book in the series introduces us firstly to a group of five friends. Alison, Aria, Emily, Spencer and Hanna as they get together to hang out in Spencer's barn. Early on in the book it's introduced that there is some sort of big secret that binds the five friends together. Throughout the book this secret is referred to as “The Jenna Thing” and while we discover the end result we don't find out just what the “Jenna Thing” was. Anyway things take a turn during the time in the barn and Alison leaves the barn only to disappear.

Cut to three years later and things have changed considerably in Rosewood. The four remaining are no longer friends. In fact they have very little interacting during the course of the book – right up until the very end. I hope that in the future books we have some more of the 'Liars' together.

And then there is the mysterious 'A' a character who seems to know all the secrets of the 'Liars'. From reading the book I don't have a clue who 'A' is and I don't think that particular mystery will be solved quickly. The original series spanned over 8 books but this is now being expanded.

I think the best way to describe this book is Desperate Housewives for teenagers. You have to suspend your disbelief in order to accept what is happening and it's rather easy to forget the characters are only supposed to be 15 / 16. Characters like Aria's brother Mike and Emily's sister Carolyn I couldn't even begin to work out their ages.

So yes I'm quite looking forward to the next instalment of the Pretty Little Liars series – and it's also made me want to see the show that little bit more just to see how it ties up with my vision of how things look.